The Enchanted April
like—thrown up the thank you as carelessly as a ball, and thought no
more about it. That morning, remembering this and ashamed, she had
knelt down with determination; but perhaps determination was bad for
prayers, for she had been unable to think of a thing to say. And as for
her bedtime prayers, on neither of the nights had she said a single
one. She had forgotten them. She had been so much absorbed in other
thoughts that she had forgotten them; and, once in bed, she was asleep
and whirling along among bright, thin swift dreams before she had so
much time as to stretch herself out.
What had come over her? Why had she let go the anchor of prayer? And
she had difficulty, too, in remembering her poor, in remembering even
that there were such things as poor. Holidays, of course, were good,
and were recognised by everybody as good, but ought they so completely
to blot out, to make such havoc of, the realities? Perhaps it was
healthy to forget her poor; with all the greater gusto would she go
back to them. But it couldn’t be healthy to forget her prayers, and
still less could it be healthy not to mind.
Rose did not mind. She knew she did not mind. And, even worse, she knew
she did not mind not minding. In this place she was indifferent to both
the things that had filled her life and made it seem as if it were
happy for years. Well, if only she could rejoice in her wonderful new
surroundings, have that much at least to set against the indifference,
the letting go—but she could not. She had no work; she did not pray;
she was left empty.
Lotty had spoilt her day that day, as she had spoilt her day the day
before—Lotty, with her invitation to her husband, with her suggestion
that she too should invite hers. Having flung Frederick into her mind
again the day before, Lotty had left her; for the whole afternoon she
had left her alone with her thoughts. Since then they had been all of
Frederick. Where at Hampstead he came to her only in her dreams, here
he left her dreams free and was with her during the day instead. And
again that morning, as she was struggling not to think of him, Lotty
had asked her, just before disappearing singing down the path, if she
had written yet and invited him, and again he was flung into her mind
and she wasn’t able to get him out.
How could she invite him? It had gone on so long, their estrangement,
such years; she would hardly know what words to use; and besides, he
would not come. Why should he come? He didn’t care about being with
her. What could they talk about? Between them was the barrier of his
work and her religion. She could not—how could she, believing as she
did in purity, in responsibility for the effect of one’s actions on
others—bear his work, bear living by it; and he, she knew, had at first
resented and then been merely bored by her religion. He had let her
slip away; he had given her up; he no longer minded; he accepted her
religion indifferently, as a settled fact. Both it and she—Rose’s mind,
becoming more luminous in the clear light of April at San Salvatore,
suddenly saw the truth—bored him.
Naturally when she saw this, when that morning it flashed upon her for
the first time, she did not like it; she liked it so little that for a
space the whole beauty of Italy was blotted out. What was to be done
about it? She could not give up believing in good and not liking evil,
and it must be evil to live entirely on the proceeds of adulteries,
however dead and distinguished they were. Besides, if she did, if she
sacrificed her whole past, her bringing up, her work for the last ten
years, would she bore him less? Rose felt right down at her very roots
that if you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is next to
impossible to unbore him. Once a bore always a bore—certainly, she
thought, to the person originally bored.
Then, thought she, looking out to sea through eyes grown misty, better
cling to her religion. It was better—she hardly noticed the
reprehensibleness of her thought—than nothing. But oh, she wanted to
cling to something tangible, to love something living, something that
one could hold against one’s heart, that one could see and touch and do
things for. If her poor baby hadn’t died . . . babies didn’t get bored
with one, it took them a long while to grow up and find one out. And
perhaps one’s baby never did find one out; perhaps one would always be
to it, however old and bearded it grew, somebody special, somebody
different from every one else, and if for no other reason, precious in
that one could never be repeated.
Sitting with dim eyes looking out to sea she felt an extraordinary
yearning to hold something of her very own tight to her bosom. Rose was
slender, and as reserved in figure as in character, yet she felt a
queer sensation of—how could she describe it?—bosom. There was
something about San Salvatore that made her feel all bosom. She wanted
to gather to her bosom, to comfort and protect, soothing the dear head
that should lie on it with softest strokings and murmurs of love.
Frederick, Frederick’s child—come to her, pillowed on her, because they
were unhappy, because they had been hurt. . . They would need her then,
if they had been hurt; they would let themselves be loved then, if they
were unhappy.
Well, the child was gone, would never come now; but perhaps
Frederick—some day—when he was old and tired . . .
Such were Mrs. Arbuthnot’s reflections and emotions that first day at
San Salvatore by herself. She went back to tea dejected as she had not
been for years. San Salvatore had taken her carefully built-up
semblance of happiness away from her, and given her nothing in
exchange. Yes—it had given her yearnings in exchange, this ache and
longing, this queer feeling of bosom; but that was worse than nothing.
And she who had learned balance, who never at home was irritated but
always able to be kind, could not, even in her dejection, that
afternoon endure Mrs. Fisher’s assumption of the position as hostess at
tea.
One would have supposed that such a little thing would not have touched
her, but it did. Was her nature changing? Was she to be not only thrown
back on long-stifled yearnings after Frederick, but also turned into
somebody who wanted to fight over little things? After tea, when both
Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline had disappeared again—it was quite
evident that nobody wanted her—she was more dejected than ever,
overwhelmed by the discrepancy between the splendour outside her, the
warm, teeming beauty and self-sufficiency of nature, and the blank
emptiness of her heart.
Then came Lotty, back to dinner, incredibly more freckled, exuding the
sunshine she had been collecting all day, talking, laughing, being
tactless, being unwise, being without reticence; and Lady Caroline, so
quiet at tea, woke up to animation, and Mrs. Fisher was not so
noticeable, and Rose was beginning to revive a little, for Lotty’s
spirits were contagious as she described the delights of her day, a day
which might easily to any one else have had nothing in it but a very
long and very hot walk and sandwiches, when she suddenly said catching
Rose’s eye, “Letter gone?”
Rose flushed. This tactlessness . . .
“What letter?” asked Scrap, interested. Both her elbows were on the
table and her chin was supported in her hands, for the nut-stage had
been reached, and there was nothing for it but to wait in as
comfortable as position as possible till Mrs. Fisher had finished
cracking.
“Asking her husband here,” said Lotty.
Mrs. Fisher looked up. Another husband? Was there to be no end to them?
Nor was this one, then, a widow either; but her husband was no doubt a
decent, respectable man, following a decent, respectable calling. She
had little hope of Mr. Wilkins; so little, that she had refrained from
inquiring what he did.
“Has it?” persisted Lotty, as Rose said nothing.
“No,” said Rose.
“Oh, well—to-morrow then,” said Lotty.
Rose wanted to say No again to this. Lotty would have in her place, and
would, besides, have expounded all her reasons. But she could not turn
herself inside out like that and invite any and everybody to come and
look. How was it that Lotty, who saw so many things, didn’t see stuck
on her heart, and seeing keep quiet about it, the sore place that was
Frederick?
“Who is your husband?” asked Mrs. Fisher, carefully adjusting another
nut between the crackers.
“Who should he be,” said Rose quickly, roused at once by Mrs. Fisher to
irritation, “except _Mr._ Arbuthnot?”
“I mean, of course, what is Mr. Arbuthnot?”
And Rose, gone painfully red at this, said after a tiny pause, “My
husband.”
Naturally, Mrs. Fisher was incensed. She couldn’t have believed it of
this one, with her decent hair and gentle voice, that she too should be
impertinent.
Chapter 14
That first week the wistaria began to fade, and the flowers of the
Judas-tree and peach-trees fell off and carpeted the ground with
rose-colour. Then all the freesias disappeared, and the irises grew
scarce. And then, while these were clearing themselves away, the double
banksia roses came out, and the big summer roses suddenly flaunted
gorgeously on the walls and trellises. Fortune’s Yellow was one of
them; a very beautiful rose. Presently the tamarisk and the daphnes
were at their best, and the lilies at their tallest. By the end of the
week the fig-trees were giving shade, the plum-blossom was out among
the olives, the modest weigelias appeared in their fresh pink clothes,
and on the rocks sprawled masses of thick-leaved, star-shaped flowers,
some vivid purple and some a clear, pale lemon.
By the end of the week, too, Mr. Wilkins arrived; even as his wife had
foreseen he would, so he did. And there were signs almost of eagerness
about his acceptance of her suggestion, for he had not waited to write
a letter in answer to hers, but had telegraphed.
That, surely, was eager. It showed, Scrap thought, a definite wish for
reunion; and watching his wife’s happy face, and aware of her desire
that Mellersh should enjoy his holiday, she told herself that he would
be a very unusual fool should he waste his time bothering about anybody
else. “If he isn’t nice to her,” Scrap thought, “he shall be taken to
the battlements and tipped over.” For, by the end of the week, she and
Mrs. Wilkins had become Caroline and Lotty to each other, and were
friends.
Mrs. Wilkins had always been friends, but Scrap had struggled not to
be. She had tried hard to be cautious, but how difficult was caution
with Mrs. Wilkins! Free herself from every vestige of it, she was so
entirely unreserved, so completely expansive, that soon Scrap, almost
before she knew what she was doing, was being unreserved too. And
nobody could be more unreserved than Scrap, once she let herself go.
The only difficulty about Lotty was that she was nearly always
somewhere else. You couldn’t catch her; you couldn’t pin her down to
come and talk. Scrap’s fears that she would grab seemed grotesque in
retrospect. Why, there was no grab in her. At dinner and after dinner
were the only times one really saw her. All day long she was invisible,
and would come back in the late afternoon looking a perfect sight, her
hair full of bits of moss, and her freckles worse than ever. Perhaps
she was making the most of her time before Mellersh arrived to do all
the things she wanted to do, and meant to devote herself afterwards to
going about with him, tidy and in her best clothes.
Scrap watched her, interested in spite of herself, because it seemed so
extraordinary to be as happy as all that on so little. San Salvatore
was beautiful, and the weather was divine; but scenery and weather had
never been enough for Scrap, and how could they be enough for somebody